The night begins with my putting a bounty on felting Ryan. The game is never as good as when he's behind and trying to catch up. I like to instigate shit. Usually I try and felt Matty as he's tilty when my crap cards beat his good ones (see the 9-T hand from last time at the row).

Jeff claims that bounty. The game starts to get good.

Hands I Remember (still tired):

I take a decent pot off Matt when I limp AQ in EP and bet 3-streets to beat his QT on a Q high board.

I lay down AQ on a AKQ board to a flop c/r from Cory after some time in the tank. I think this was a bad fold in retrospect but I don't know his game that well still.

Steve gets felted time after time. Starts to get angry around the 3rd reload. His anger does not make him play better.

Cory keeps flopping better than me, and I call him down time and time again with losing hands. Doh.

I raise QJs on Button, ryan pauses and calls, steve and Cory call. Flop is QQT rainbow. Ryan leads, Cory calls, I call. Someone else has a Q I can smell it. F'er. Ryan leads the blanko turn $10, Cory folds, I call. Ryan bets $10 on the K-ball river, I call. His AQ is good. Nothing I can do here I don't think. I could fold the river for $25-30 though.

Matt takes off with $45 profit, down to 5 players.

Cory dominates and continues to win pots off everyone. I think he ran well and played it well too.

Ryan and I have a great conversation in the blinds. Flop comes down and it goes as such:

Me: I hit itRyan: So did IMe: Ok I bet $1.50Ryan: I call(turn)Me: I still hit it the first timeRyan: Me tooMe: $2.00Ryan: I call(river)Me: That one missed me, I still have my first one though. I bet $2.Ryan: I donkey'd you and caught the river, I call.He wins

Watkinson's girlfriend: "Come on, make him a believer. Make me a believer, Father."

Norman Chad quips: "I'm not sure who the Lord is listening to, but Watkinson needs a seven or he's done."

I guess she should have been praying to "tiny infant Jesus, with your baby Jesus powers..." because clearly her man upstairs wasn't listening. Yang was dialed in with his Jesus (and positive expectation but let's not let math factor into this) and wins the hand.

I'll have to try it vs. Matty or something, but I'll be sure to take dead aim at tiny baby infant jesus and make that prayer my bitch.

Friday, March 07, 2008

As seen over at some crazy blonde hippy's blog, golf pro Tripp Isenhour is now in some trouble with a few people over his decision to try and hit a rather loud hawk with his golf shot as sort of a game.

Now, I'm no animal nut so I'm not as pissed off about this as the US Solider Killing A Puppy thing (I think THAT guy should go to military prison) as I think this was dumb luck and a dumber choice. I don't care who you are, hitting a hawk that is ~3 feet in size from 80 yards with a golf ball is dumb luck. However, TRYING to hit the hawk with a golf ball... and you're a professional golfer... you've gotta be an idiot.

As a last note, we had a hawk at our golf course the last couple seasons. They're absolutely amazing. This guy really must have had his wires crossed that day to even consider taking one out... a serious lapse in judgement. Maximum penalty is $1500 and 14 months in pound me in the ass prison. Suggested prison nickname: Hawk, natch.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

I'm a Canadian. I am a proud Canadian for the most part, outside of the whole pandering to the Quebec'ers thing.

The USA is well known to have passed the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (UIGEA) tucked neatly inside a Port Security act. The conservatives there believe that they should make decisions for peoples actions in their own home. They can happily drive to an Indian casino and gamble their dollars, but just don't do it on the Internet. Yeah, makes sense. It just happens that a (very) few online casinos and quite a few poker sites have seen to not lay down to this law -- particularly the privately held sites. The poker sites contend that since poker is a strategy game -- and it is -- it should not be considered "gambling", and the operating casinos, well they just don't care. And so they go about their business and lobby for change.

Canada on the other hand stays out of the issue for the most part. The Canadian based Kahnawake tribe has a gaming commission of its own that regulates online sites, lots of Canadians gamble online and all is well with the world.

Now this is potentially changing. Lobbied by a horse track operators who are upset that online sites take wagers on everything - so people don't have to show up and bet through their window. They're pitching prohibiting banks and credit card companies from transferring money to online sites... they're EVEN pitching to have ISP's block access to these sites. Here are a few articles on the subject.

Now, let's review this. A group of horse racing track operators wants Canada to not allow its citizens to gamble online because it wants them to gamble inside its monopoly.

What other restrictions can we put in place so that people with controls over industries can avoid adapting?

Prohibit Peer To Peer File Sharing - It's only for piracy anyways, right? ... or let's just tax canadians yearly for music and movies regardless of whether they pirate and give it to the industry groups, they pay the artists... right?

Prohibit YouTube - there is not 20% canadian content on this, how will our Canadian film industry ever survive?

Prohibit Porn - How can we tell that every image and video that comes into the country is tasteful in the public interest? We can't monitor the whole Internet... ban it all.

Hmm, those ideas don't sound too good to me. It sounds like the government is trying to decide how we should live our lives to benefit the bottom line of a few corporations.